


green-eyed monster

by leisvrely



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Apathy, Gen, Jealousy, Lack of Communication, Misunderstandings, Not Shippy, Superpowers, au without volleyball, breaking friendships, extreme envy, hanamaki centric, i guess?, not superhero au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:54:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26470696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leisvrely/pseuds/leisvrely
Summary: maybe it was selfish, self-centered, and narcissistic as all hell, but hanamaki always figured he'd be the main character
Kudos: 7





	1. new testament

In their first year of high school, Hanamaki and Matsukawa created something called “The Question Game”. It was plain and simple, and less of a game than one would assume. One of them would ask any question, and the only rule was that you had to take it completely seriously and give a real answer. Most of the time, it was used to force a conversation when bored, but on the occasion it had become a tool in a fight or disagreement. Generally a: “ _ Question Game. Did you take the hundred yen on my desk? _ ”. Or sometimes, a: “ _ Question Game. Did the girl I like confess to you? _ ”. 

But really, Hanamaki and Matsukawa didn’t fight often. And even now, in their third year, they were mature enough to settle their problems with a calm conversation instead of yelling at each other like they used to. That’s what Hanamaki considered growth, anyway. What was the point in having a best friend if your bond shattered with a single argument? 

“Hey,” he started one Saturday. The two were sitting on a grassy knoll behind his house. “Question Game. If you could have any power at all, what would you pick?” 

Matsukawa hummed, picking at weeds from the grass. “You’re still thinking about that movie, huh?” 

Last week, the two had gone to see a new superhero movie. One based on a comic they read as kids. “Shut up, just answer the question.”   
“Probably stopping time.” He turned his head towards him. “I feel like my life would be a lot easier. I start to fuck up a test? I pause time and grab a textbook. Someone’s being a dick? I’ll stop things to think of a better come-back.” 

Hanamaki sits up on his elbows to raise an eyebrow. “How does that work though? Talk to me, buddy. Does pausing time pause cellular decay?”   
He gives him a look. “I would hope so.”   
“What about your own?” 

Matsukawa’s eyes widen. “Shit. You think I’d age faster than everyone else?”   
“Only if you pause time for long enough.” He shrugs, looking out at the back of his head. The sun was starting to creep down to the horizon, golden light shining onto his roof. 

The two were quiet for a second before snapping their heads at each other, realising the same thing. “How the hell do you measure that?” They ask at the same time, pausing to laugh and roll their eyes. 

“God,” Matsukawa shakes his head. “It’s so complicated to think of logistics. I guess I’ll just be the super rich guy that builds himself a super-suit or something. What about you, though? What’s your power?”   
He’s been thinking this over since the movie ended. His eyes narrow playfully as he grins. “Imagine, like, a modern day Jesus with absolutely no religious ties.” He sits up and holds his arms out. “Like, okay, picture like god-power but without god.”   
His eyebrows furrowed together. “Doesn’t that just make _you_ god?” 

Hanamaki sighs, exasperated and flops back down onto his back. “Damn. I guess you’re right.”   
“Don’t worry, I’ll build your first altar.” 

“You better.”   
The two debate over whether that actually counts as a super power or not. Matsukawa thinks it just means he’s a demi-god, but Hanamaki points out that Jesus would have had to just be a superhero. 

“I think I saw that on a children’s church pamphlet,” Matsukawa playfully kicks at his ankle. “While you’re busy turning water into wine, or whatever, I’ll be building rockets to take you out.”   
“Aww, like on a date?” 

“Oh, shut up.”   
“When have I ever?”   
As it starts to get dark, Hanamaki’s mother comes out to yell over for them to come inside. The debate ends there, like it always does. One round of the Question Game never lasts two conversations. 

* * *

It’s about a month after Hanamaki turns eighteen when the two are leaning up on the wall, watching Oikawa get confessed to by yet _another_ girl.   
“How many times is that since break?” Matsukawa sighs before taking a sip from his drink. 

Next to them at the vending machine, Iwaizumi stands up as he grabs a bag of chips. “Eight, I think?” 

They all grumble to themselves, waiting for their most popular friend to finish his business and join them. It wasn’t like the rest of them weren’t lookers. Iwaizumi was definitely attractive to girls, but he continuously scared them off. Matsukawa was nice enough to girls for them to like him, but most of the time just as a friend. And in Hanamaki’s case, he hadn’t been confessed to his entire high school career. Not once. 

“She’s pretty,” Iwaizumi noted, opening his bag. “What are our bets?” 

At the same time, both Hanamaki and Matsukawa shook their heads. “No way.” Hanamaki sighs. “He’s really picky.”   
Their conversation too far to hear, the boys watched him put a hand on her shoulder and explain something to her in a sympathetic way. Matsukawa groaned as Iwaizumi face-palmed. 

“Called it.” He shoves his hands in his pockets and shoves off the wall as the girl speed-walks away with a red face. “Let’s go kill the guy.” 

The other two joined him, walking towards the staircase he stood at, looking fairly pleased with himself for turning down a confession. Iwaizumi walked up, punching him in the shoulder. 

“Iwa-chan!” Oikawa scowled down at him. “What was that for?”   
“Turning down every girl you see like you aren’t lucky,” he huffed back, “while the rest of us starve.” 

His nose wrinkles and he waves a hand. “Gross, Iwa-chan. Talking like that is why you don’t have a girlfriend.”   
They continue to bicker back and forth like they always do before leaving to do homework in the library. Both Hanamaki and Matsukawa didn’t want to think about school work, so they sat on the stairs idly watching the occasional students pass by. 

“Oikawa is definitely his own main character, huh?” Matsukawa sighs. “If I were that popular, I would never turn down a girl.”   
“I don’t think I’ve had a girlfriend since I was nine.” He hums in response, involuntarily tapping his foot against the floor. “He’s the main character in a dating sim and skips every character.”   
Quiet sits over them for a second before Matsukawa turns to him. “Okay, Question Game. If you _were_ the main character, what genre would you live in?”   
It’s a fun question to entertain. Hanamaki thinks it over for a second before snapping his fingers. “Ah! Fantasy. I’d never be bored, plus I’d probably have a cool sword. I could save the day, get super rich, and be a hero.” 

Matsukawa snorts. “I don’t think you could be trusted with a sword. Fantasy would be fun, though. I could ride a dragon, or something.” 

“What about you, then?” He tilts his head. 

“One of those indie coming-of-age films.”   
This time, Hanamaki laughs. “Really? That doesn’t seem like you.”   
“Exactly!” He exclaims. “If I was in one of those movies, I’d be way more interesting. I’d dye my hair, or something. And I’d _definitely_ get a girlfriend at the end.” 

“But think about the fantasy trope!” Hanamaki throws his hands up with a smile. “We could go on some lame-ass D&D quest and learn some crazy magic and have a spell battle.”   
“We’d _also_ get killed off in our first boss fight.” He raises an eyebrow. “But, I will admit that we’d get girls.”   
“ _Fairy_ girls.”   
“ _Dragon_ girls.”   
They laugh at the ridiculousness of it, a first-year passing by and looking at them a little weird. Hanamaki catches his breath and fiddles with a loose button on his blazer.   
“Hey, what do you wanna do for your birthday?” He asks. “Embarrassing karaoke? Trip to Tokyo? Huge party where we invite everybody we’ve ever known?”   
He smiles at the thought. “Nah, was thinking about the four of us doing a movie night?” 

Hanamaki raises his eyebrows. “Bad romcoms?”   
“Even worse.” He grins back. “I rented various movies with one star or less ratings. The worst movies to have ever been made.”   
“Sounds perfect.”   
“It has to be.” 

He accidentally rips off the button, cursing inwardly at how his mother will react. “I guess it’s better that we don’t live in a fantasy world, with swords and sexy fairy-ladies.”   
“Really?” Matsukawa leans back in a way that _can’t_ be comfortable. 

“Yeah,” he flips the button like a coin. “I can worry less about quests and more about what the hell I’m gonna get for your birthday.” 

He smiles. “No idea what you’re talking about. That’s the hardest quest of all.”   
Hanamaki flicks the button at him, missing completely. “Then I guess we live in a grey area.” 

“Cheers to that.” 

* * *

It’s the day before Matsukawa’s birthday that Hanamaki realises it’s a leap year. He’s checking his calendar app on his phone, to make sure his midnight notification will be on, just like it has for the past six years of knowing his best friend. Matsukawa’s parents are out for the night, leaving four teenage boys on their own. It’s less dramatic than they joked about, the craziest thing to happen being Oikawa ordering pizza with calamari on it. 

“Look,” he says as they cut slices, “I just thought it sounded _good_.”   
“Oh, holy shit.” Hanamaki takes a slice to inspect it. “It’s got shrimp too.” 

Despite the seafood toppings, the four cheers their slices together before biting in. After everybody hounding him for it, it’s hard to admit it was a good decision. The seafood pizza was actually a weirdly brilliant twist to the normal pepperoni they got. 

“Alright, then.” Matsukawa stood in front of the tv, pizza slice in one hand and remote in another. “This first one, I’ll warn you, is the worst rated drama movie I could find. I’ve already read the complete review and will let you all guess what happens.” 

It was a genius idea, really for the night. Not only was the first movie so awful that everybody was cry-laughing at what was supposed to be a tragic death scene, the second movie had a terrible ten-minute long sex scene that made Oikawa laugh so hard he choked on pizza and had to be heimliched by Iwaizumi. It was great when something was so funny that it forced Oikawa out of his “cute-laugh-to-impress-girls” and into his ugly, hacking laugh. Sometime around the middle of this second movie though, Hanamaki noticed that Matsukawa had stopped laughing. He continuously shifted in his place on the couch, rubbing at his temples with a frown, or hugging a pillow to rest his forehead on. 

Hanamaki leaned over. “Are you okay?”   
“Yeah,” he nodded. “I just got a bad headache out of nowhere.”   
“I’ll grab you some tylenol, wait a sec.”   
“‘K.”   
He got up from the couch, walking to the kitchen. Hanamaki had been in and out of this house so many times that he had everything basically memorized. From the medication in the cabinet to the porn magazines under Matsukawa’s bed, he’d seen it all. It didn’t take long for him to grab two of the pills and a can of melon soda to take them with, him soon returning to the dark living room, where Oikawa was ugly-laughing again. 

“Shit!” He exclaimed. “What did I miss?”   
“This dude has the _weirdest_ accent I’ve ever heard,” Iwaizumi looked back from the headrest of the couch. “I think he’s, like, a British guy speaking Japanese. You should have _heard_ the way he just said ‘shirt’.” 

Hanamaki chuckled at the thought, before pausing. The corner of the couch was now empty. “Hey, where’d Matsukawa go?” 

“Think he went to take a piss or something.” 

With the soda and tablets in hand, he can’t help but frown. Something feels off, even more when he hears the faintest of crashes from upstairs. Iwaizumi and Oikawa are still invested in the movie, however, so he heads to the stairs alone. 

“Mattsun?” he calls out into the dark hallway. “You up here, buddy?”   
The lights on under the bathroom door made him rethink his concerns. _Maybe he_ was _just taking a piss._ Hanamaki walks down the hallway, footsteps too loud in the general quiet atmosphere, the only noises being the faint sound of a movie and laughter from downstairs. 

_ Just in case. _

_ We’re checking just in case.  _

He pauses at the bathroom door, wondering if this was worth the possible embarrassment of being scared about a piss break. In his mind, though, he decided that they’d laugh about all this later. Just like they always did. 

A soft cry came from behind the door. 

“Mattsun,” he repeats as he knocks. “Are you okay?”

There isn’t a response. 

_ Alright, that’s it.  _

He opens the door, eyes widening in shock. Matsukawa clutches at his nose with both hands covered in blood, drops trickling to the floor with a steady flow. The can drops from his hand to the floor. 

“Jesus Christ,” he says and takes a step forward. The bathroom stand has been knocked over, bottles of face wash and hand soap littered to the floor. “What happened?” 

Matsukawa moves his hands to respond, revealing his lower face completely smeared by blood from the heavy flow coming from his nose. As he opens his mouth, his eyes widen and he doubles over with another cry of pain, similar to the one Hanamaki heard from outside. 

“Shit- shit!” Unsure what to do, he reaches out towards him, touching his back. Matsukawa’s arm intercepts, and Hanamaki is blown backward into the sink. 

That’s when everything went dark. 

He regains consciousness either forever after it happens, or instantly. As his eyelids flutter open, he partially wonders if he’s dead. His back and headache tremendously from where he sits in a pile of shattered porcelain and glass. 

“ _What the fuck!”_ _  
__“Oh my god!_ ”   
Oikawa and Iwaizumi’s voices are far away in his mind as his eyes adjust better to the bright lights of the bathroom. Something wet drips down the side of his head. He slowly moves his hand to it, feeling something sharp and unnatural. With little thought, he pulls it out and glances at the shard of glass, covered in blood, that sits in the palm of his hand. 

“Makki, hey, Makki.” Somebody’s trying to pull him off the ground. “Dude, c’mon,  _ please  _ get up.” 

Iwaizumi grips his arm, managing to pull him up half-way before his weight is too much and he falls back down onto his knees in front of Matsukawa. In front of his hand that flexes between an open palm and a fist. Blue sparks of electricity travel across the skin, and Hanamaki suddenly recalls what happened. 

Oikawa reaches out towards him. “Mattsun. _Mattsun._ It’s okay, everything is _okay_.” His voice isn’t very convincing, it being more of a warbling yell if anything. 

“Stop!” Hanamaki shouts at the same time as Matsukawa himself. 

“Don’t touch me!” He backs into the corner, hairs standing on end. “Go away!” His face is still covered in blood, expression pained and terrified. “I don’t want to hurt you!”   
He doubles over again, clutching his chest and heaving. Hanamaki falls back on his ass, trying to scoot away as fast as he can and bumps into Iwaizumi’s legs. Judging from the sharp pains in his palms, he thinks there might be glass from the broken mirror embedded there as well. 

Matsukawa gets sick on the floor, gasping for air when he looks up at them. 

“Jesus Christ.” 

“Call the police. Call his parents. Call _somebody!_ ”   
Hanamaki freezes, staring up at his eyes as his irises swirl with every colour he could possibly recognize and more. The blue electricity turns into magenta as he puts his head in his hands, fingers gripping tightly into his hair, an agonizing noise of pain caught in his throat. 

From the floor, Hanamaki’s now-cracked phone screen lights up with cheerful chimes and a single notification. 

  
**_00:00: Mattsun’s 18th Birthday !!_ **


	2. lazarus

The splash of warm water hit his face. Hanamaki opened his eyes to stare at the bottom of his sink, feeling the drips of water fall from his eyelashes. He stood up straight, looking at himself in the mirror. He still wore the suit he had put on for the graduation party his parents put on a few hours ago. Extended family and family friends had all come to congratulate him on finishing the first chapter of his life. That, and well, talk about the second coming of Christ. 

Hanamaki began to pull off his tie, checking the group chat to see if everybody was still on for tonight. They had begun to plan this in their second year. The friend group had always discussed what universities they planned on going to and what they wanted to study, but it had been a strict rule that absolutely nobody would share where they got accepted to until the night after graduation. It had been difficult to avoid the topic, to fail at holding back tears around them when he got several rejection letters, and even harder to only celebrate with his parents when he finally got his acceptance letter. It didn’t matter, anyway. 

He was at least ninety-percent sure Oikawa and Iwaizumi had cheated. 

It wasn’t their fault, not really. They had been friends since before they could speak in full sentences. That was the ideal kind of friendship. The one where you trusted somebody with your life, where you could hardly think of a moment in your life without them, where secrets couldn’t even be kept. 

It was nice. 

The cool spring breeze blew through his hair as he walked down the street. It was getting dark out later, he noticed. Another reminder that the change for summer was about to begin. Hanamki fiddled with the letter in his sweatshirt pocket, not what else to do with his hands. He paused by a lamp post, seeing the familiar photo on a sheet of paper, and read the bold lettering: 

**HE IS RISEN**

**REPENT BEFORE THE END OF TIMES.**

**CALL NOW TO THE NEW CHURCH OF THE PEOPLE.**

Several strips of paper hung at the bottom, all holding the same phone number. He gazed at the photo that was taken that night before ripping the paper off without haste and crumpling it up into a ball. It was tradition, at least. For the past month, Hanamaki would walk past the lamp post every day and rip down the same paper. In his mind, he thought of it as a little game. Whoever stopped first, either him or the people putting up the papers, lost. And with that bit of spite, he refused to lose. 

Plus, religion was a scam anyway. 

Outside of Iwaizumi’s apartment, Hanamaki rocked back and forth on his heels whistling an out-of-tune rendition of a theme song. He had texted him maybe three minutes prior, knowing that their doorbell didn’t work. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he wondered if they had already opened their letters, forgetting him. 

The door swung open, catching him off guard. “Makki-chan,” Oikawa smiled before stepping aside for him to walk in. “And here we thought that you were gonna be a no-show.” 

He frowned as he kicked off his shoes by the door. “I texted you the entire day that I’d come.”   
“Well, yeah, but-”   
“Do you have a lighter?” Hanamaki looked up, acting normal as ever even when Oikawa audibly deflated a little. 

“Another one?” He asked as the two walked down the hallway to Iwaizumi’s room. “You’re determined.”   
Shrugging, he pulls the crumpled paper out of his pocket. “I won’t stop until they do.” 

Iwaizumi hung off his bed upside down, looking up at them as they came inside. “Another flyer?”   
“Yup.” Hanamaki tossed it towards the metal bowl that had made permanent residence inside of Iwaizumi’s room, after he had gained a new hobby of burning the flyers. It missed by about a yard. “More freaks trying to make it a bigger deal than it is.” 

That was a funny statement, he thought. He didn’t even really believe his own words, as much as he tried. Of course, it was a big deal. Everything had changed. Everything was  _ changing.  _ Hanamaki hardly remembered what had happened near the end of the night after his concussion, but every minute of it had affected his current livelihood. For instance, he had never felt more lonely in his entire life than he had in the past month. Everybody suddenly cared about his story, who he was, and what had happened to Matsu-

_ Nope.  _

That had become a banned word in his mind. The more he thought about it, the worse he felt. Everybody cared about that night and how he was related to it, but he couldn’t find a real source of empathy. Everyone just wanted to hear him talk about it, like some horrible car crash they couldn’t help but watch. Everyone wanted a story, but nobody really cared. 

He understood it, though. He’d do the same thing if it had happened to some other sorry sucker. 

“Alright,” Iwaizumi climbed off of his bed, joining the other two in a circle on the floor. “Ready?”   
Oikawa pulled out his own letter, flipping it over and over in his lap. Hanamaki did the same, noting how his was crumpled, unlike Oikawa’s pristine-looking envelope. There was a slight pause when all three of them held them out in their laps. Both Iwaizumi and Oikawa gawked at theirs. Both envelopes were the same dark green. Hanamaki looked down at his cream-coloured letter. 

“Well,” he sighed, deciding to get it out before it sounded disappointing. “I’m going to the uni here in Miyagi. Close enough to home, but I think my parents are gonna want me to dorm.”   
Oikawa snatched the other green envelope from his friend’s hands. “You’re going to Kyoto too?” 

The conversation completely ignored what he had said as the two, both in surprise, got excited over going to the same school. Oikawa was going into the art department of the school, but they’d be in the same place. Hanamaki leaned back on his palms, holding back a snarky remark that somebody else could laugh at. 

_ Two best friends.  _ He was happy for them, really. What were the odds that they’d get accepted to the same school in the same city? They really  _ couldn’t  _ have a world where they weren’t in each other’s lives. 

“Gonna go take a piss.” He got to his feet, leaving the bedroom and gently closing the door behind him. 

Continuing down the dark hallway until he got to the front door, Hanamaki thought for a moment before leaving the apartment completely. If he had stayed for another ten minutes, he might’ve gotten sick. 

It was late out. There wasn’t really anywhere to go but home, and yet the thought of going home felt irresponsible. Selfish, even. Some people couldn’t go home. He’d already knocked on their door every day since it happened. 

A convenience store across the street’s sign flickered, taunting him to go closer. There was nothing special about it, just another sketchy gas station. Either way, he sighed and shoved his hands back into his pockets as he jogged across the road. 

The door jingled as he opened it and walked inside, an unsurprising empty room with just him and the cashier. Hanamaki cruised down the aisles of snacks and candies, aware of how easily he could steal if he wanted to. He never actually had shoplifted before. Matsu- someone else had a policy of taking a chapstick from every store they went into, but that was more of a tradition. He never even used chapstick, but it was a funny gag. 

Out of the corner of his eye, a green lighter caught his attention. He pulled it off the shelf, rolling it around in his hands before shrugging and walking up to the counter. The cashier looked up from their newspaper, sighing and moving to scan it. 

“Oh,” Hanamaki cleared his throat, “also a pack of smokes. Camel.” 

The man eyed him. “I.D.?”   
He nodded with a smile, pretending to search his pockets before groaning. “Shit. I left it in the car. I’m twenty-two, though, I swear.” 

“Is that why you’re wearing that one high school’s sweatshirt?” The man raised an eyebrow, as if to challenge him. 

Despite his heart starting to beat a little faster in his chest, Hanamaki didn’t react much. He looked down at the blue and white hoodie he wore, internally swearing at himself. “Yup.” He hadn’t lost the game yet. “My younger brother goes. You know him? Oikawa Tooru, big art kid. I’m in town for his graduation. Can’t help but be proud of the guy, plus I’d dare to say blue is my colour.” 

The serious demeanour of Hanamaki seemed to win over the cashier, who gave in and turned around with a roll of the eyes to grab the cigarettes. “That’s the school with the god kid, yeah? The one with super powers?”   
That sick feeling returned to his stomach as he slid the cash across the counter. “Yeah, my brother won’t stop talking about it.”   
“It’s crazy.”   
“Sure is.”   
Hanamaki took his lighter and his cigarettes and wished the man a good evening, smile turning into a scowl when he no longer faced him. As soon as he exited the store, he looked down at the pack of cigarettes with some uncertainty. He had never smoked before, nor had he ever wanted to smoke. Even now, he didn’t feel like smoking. Shrugging, he continued down the street and shoved it back in his pocket. 

All he really wanted was the power to buy them. 

About an hour later, it was rightfully dark. He sat on a swing in the park, already texting his mother that he’d be spending the night at Iwaizumi’s. That had been the original plan from the start, but he got the feeling that as the night went on, he would have to be alone. 

He wondered what university Matsukawa had gotten into. 

Suddenly realising what he thought he kicked the sand, resentful of his own self. It shouldn’t be a rule, but the only thing he had to do to stay sane was play along. He was so  _ alone.  _

Hanamaki pulled out the cigarettes again, breaking the seal and flipping open the top. They looked almost cartoonish to him. He’d never handled them so closely in real life, the idea was funny to him. Carefully picking an unremarkable one out from the middle, he held it up to his lips and felt around for the lighter. It took a couple tries to actually light it, but when he did he found himself filled with satisfaction. With a smile, he took a deep inhale and saw his life flash before his eyes. 

With a hacking cough, he tried to get every lasting taste of the nicotine out his mouth. No matter how much clean air he sucked in, it lingered. Hanamaki got off the swing, spitting out into the grass as he walked up to the trashcan and threw the cigarette away. 

If Matsukawa were here, they both would’ve tried it and probably made a huge scene out of it. Realistically, he thinks that his friend might’ve gotten sick. Then if Matsukawa got sick, Hanamaki would get sick and they’d laugh about how pathetic that was in the middle of the park. 

He’s in too deep to stop the thoughts. 

Really, if Matsukawa had been here, they’d still be at Iwaizumi’s. There would have been no interlude with the convenience store, no pretending to be of-age to buy cigarettes, and no midnight walk around the town. 

This time, Hanamaki kicks at the trash can. It’s so easy to imagine how the night would have gone with him here. It’s so easy to imagine how the end of his senior year would have gone with him. 

But that hadn’t happened. Something he couldn’t explain, something nobody could explain, had happened to him, and now he hadn’t seen his best friend in a month. He had disappeared without a trace. Matsukawa’s parents, who  _ adored  _ Hanamaki, wouldn’t even talk to him about it; no matter how many times he knocked on their door. 

Maybe they would have gone to the same university.

A car drives by, flooding the park very briefly with bright light. He slouches, watching the quick-to-recede shadows, encompassing the entire playground once again with darkness. From his pocket, his phone buzzes. He’s fairly certain he already knows what it is. Probably a quick “okay” from his mother, or a text from Oikawa asking where he went. 

Hanamaki unlocks his phone, staring down at the text message. A heavy feeling of dread, almost, fills his stomach. It gets a little hard to breathe as he reads it at least twenty times over. 

**mattsy:** hey where are you 

It’s his contact for Matsukawa, always has been since they got phones. It’s his texting style, simple and casual, just like Hanamaki’s. The three dots come up, signalling he’s typing, before disappearing. Then once again, they pop up before he gets a new text. 

**mattsy:** just send me your location. ik you arent home

Hanamaki does just that, not giving a real response asides from complying to his request. His thumb rhythmically tapped the side of the phone over and over until there came another message. 

**mattsy:** k stay there. see ya in a few   


Turning off his phone and taking a few unsure steps backwards, he tries his hardest to get rid of the feeling in his stomach. It doesn’t go away. 

“Fuck,” he says to himself, putting a hand up to his hair. Maybe it’s a prank. Maybe some cruel person stole his phone and texted him. 

He stops back at the swing, sitting down to keep balance. This didn’t seem right. Matsukawa falls off the face of the earth for an entire month, and suddenly wants to find him with no explanation? It didn’t sit right with him. This whole thing didn’t sit right with him. And yet there he sat, gripping both chains of the swing on either side of him, ever so swinging back and forth. 

It was hard to wage how long he sat there, staring down at the sand. But at some point in time when his hands had been chilled enough by the midnight air, he could hear the footsteps behind him. 

The hairs on his arm stood up straight. 

“Makki.”   
He slowly spins the swing around, owlishly looking up at him. 

It  _ is _ him, after all. 

Matsukawa stands in front of him, hands in his sweatpants pockets, looking down at him like nothing had ever happened at all. 

“Hey.” He smiles at him. 

The goosebumps go down. “Hey,” Hanamaki says back. 

They stare at each other for a few seconds before his body moves faster than his mind. He pushes off the swing, walking towards him and hugs Matsukawa tightly. His friend hugs back, arms desperately holding him with a hand fisting his hair, neither of them saying anything.

It was weird, really. Their friend group had been touchy before, of course. They were playful and roughhousing dudes, but Hanamaki had never been _affectionate_ with his friends. Never had he pulled one of them into a hug and let it last way over a normal duration. It’s weird. 

The feeling in his stomach has yet to go away, but it’s all he feels. From the times he’s imagined this happening every day for the past month, he had always imagined tears and heavy emotions and a proper explanation that everything would be okay.

He feels nothing, and it’s weird. 

Matsukawa pulls away first, his hand still gripping Hanamaki’s shoulder. “I missed you. I really did.”   
“Dude,” his voice cracks, “where the hell have you _been_?” 

It’s clear that he doesn’t know what to say. For a minute, he just bites his lips and looks down towards the playground sand. “I want to tell you.”   
“Then _tell_ me.”   
The two have a bit of a standoff, Matsukawa unable to give a response and Hanamaki staring at him expectantly. 

Nothing starts to go away, replaced with bubbling rage. He takes a step forward, voice escalating with every word. “You disappear for a month and don’t contact  _ any  _ of us, and then you just reappear and can’t even explain yourself?” Hanamaki shoves him, albeit not hard. 

Then it happens, faster than a second, but enough for him to notice: Matsukawa’s eyes flicker into another colour. His shout echos off, taking several steps back in fear. The memory of what happened that night, although not completely clear, was enough to warn him. 

Matsukawa reaches a hand out, grabbing his wrist. “Stop. Stop, _please._ ” They’re back to normal now, his eyes, but Hanamaki feels caught like a deer in the headlights. “I want to tell you, but I don’t think I can _he_ _re_.” 

It takes a lot of effort to hush the voice in his head, warning him. 

_ This is my best friend, he isn’t a threat.  _

_ He slammed you into a wall and fell you off the face of the earth.  _

_ But he’s my best fucking friend.  _

_ I can trust him.  _

Hanamaki nods. “Then where?” 

  
  


Carbonation escapes his soda bottle as a noise louder than a gunshot as soon as Hanamaki unscrews the cap. He looks over at Matsukawa, the two giving a quiet cheers from where they sit. When he had first been ushered away from the playground, he assumed they’d go into a secret bunker. He would be sworn to secrecy, gun pointed to his head. 

He didn’t really think they’d casually stroll into another convenience store, buy a couple of drinks, and go to sit outside their high school. 

“Hasn’t all this been rather public?” He deadpans before taking a sip. “Might as well tell everybody Jesus Christ is just having a night on the town.” 

There’s a hum from besides him. “I missed it, the school that is.”   
“You didn’t miss much.”   
For a moment, nobody says anything. Both of them knew that was a lie. 

Matsukawa runs his thumb around the open hole of his bottle. “I don’t remember a lot of what happened that night. When I woke up, I was in a white room and was told that my parents had signed some kind of fuckin’ paperwork so I couldn’t go anywhere. No phone, no windows, not even a doorknob on my side of the door.” He looks at him from the corners of his eyes, thumb pausing. “I couldn’t have contacted you if I tried. I _did._ ”   
Guilt starts to pool in his stomach. “Oh.” Hanamaki picks at blades of grass on the ground, trying his hardest not to look back in his friend’s direction. “They just kept you in a room?”   
“For a few days, I think.” He takes a swig of his drink. “Then I got moved to, like, this really small apartment, or something like that. “Dr. Takeuchi, this scientist dude, talks to me about how they’re going to figure out what was going on with me. I wasn’t going to be going back to school for a while, and for every week I was there my parents got paid a shitload. Each week, they told me I would go home soon. Then, I figured I was going to live down there forever.”   
“Shit.” 

“I know.” 

Hanamaki draws his eyebrows together. “They didn’t like, _hurt_ you or whatever, right?”   
He laughs at that. “Not physically. But the only entertainment they gave me was three volumes of old poetry. The only entertainment I got from _that_ was trying to teach myself how to make those little swan things from the pages. Each day was just new tests and tests and tests. I actually started to miss school.” 

“I hope you know your popularity soared.” A sad smile appears on his face as he flicks a small chunk of lawn at him. “I don’t think a single day went by where I didn’t hear people talking about you. There’s a church for you now, y’know.” 

Matsukawa puts his palms up to his eyes with a laugh, leaning against the brick of the wall. “God, this sucks.”   
“You’re basically a superhero, that doesn’t seem that sucky.”   
“I don’t even know what I am.” 

Hanamaki looks at him for a moment before he hears it. Somewhere beyond the baseball field, there’s a cracking of the forest floor. He spins around, staring at dark woods. 

“What?” Matsukawa asks from beside him, watching as he stands up to peer into the general direction of the noise. “Is there somebody there?” 

He doesn’t have an answer. It’s probably just an animal, but a gut feeling tells him otherwise. “You know when you turn off the lights and run to your bed as fast as you can?”   
“Makki, you are _eighteen_ years old.”   
“I know.” He leans down, grabbing his forearm and pulling up. “But it’s just a feeling.”   
They walk off of the school property quickly and quietly. Even as they continue down the sidewalk, the feeling of being watched sears into the back of his neck. Now paranoid, Hanamaki pulls the hood of his sweatshirt up. The sound of their footsteps on the pavement filled the entire atmosphere of the quiet night. Nobody else was out. Nobody else was awake. 

It makes his heart beat a little faster in his chest. 

Matsukawa pauses by a lamp post, holding onto the edge of another poster. It’s one similar to that of the one Hanamaki pulled down every day, although this one with a slightly different message. 

**HE HAS COME TO SAVE US** **  
****PREPARE FOR THE RAPTURE**

**CALL NOW TO THE NEW CHURCH OF THE PEOPLE.**

Instead of staring at it like him, Hanamaki grabs the other corner and rips it down. 

“Ignore these, they’re everywhere.” He balls up the paper and tosses it into the grass. “People went fuckin’ looney” 

Despite the fact that he keeps walking, he only hears one pair of footsteps. A little confused, he turns around to see Matsukawa bending over to grab the paper and look at it again. 

“I’m not god,” he says softly. “You know that, right?” 

Hanamaki shrugs. “You’re just you, dude.” 

_ No, he isn’t.  _

It takes him a bit to read the paper again, letting it drop back to the ground. “Yeah, yeah. You’re right.”   
“Always am.” 

They continue walking, little conversation taking place in the heavy quiet between the two. There’s still an incredible amount that he wants to ask him. What his “powers” are, what kinds of tests they did, why he’s here now; each second they continue walking in silence, the more the questions pile up in his mind. Every once in a while, he’ll glance over and watch the way Matsukawa blankly stares ahead, not offering any further explanation to anything that’s gone on. 

The longer their silence goes on, the more paranoid he gets. 

A breeze passes by them, making it chilly enough for Matsukawa to pull his own hood up. Hanamaki hums a short tune to the beat of their footsteps. They are fairly in sync, unlike another patter of footsteps that lags behind. 

_ No.  _

Hanamaki stops for a second, and the sound becomes clearer. 

“What’s wrong?” Matsukawa asks, eyebrows pulled together. 

Afraid to answer, he subtly nods his head to the empty space, as if asking him to look. 

_ Is there somebody following us?  _

Matsukawa nods, and pulls his arm to cross the street. They walk quickly, but that doesn’t stop the jog of the other person behind them. There should be no reason to get scared. The two of them together were pretty big and could definitely take on a mugger, but Hanamaki couldn’t help but still feel terrified. With each step, he felt like the sound was getting closer. 

It had to have been the same person as from the woods. 

His gut was yelling at him to break into a sprint, just like when he was a little too creeped out by the dark to calmly walk to bed. 

From the corner of his eye, he saw a flicker of light. Hanamaki shot his eyes downwards to Matsukawa’s hand pulled into a tight fist. Those small waves of electricity travelled across the skin, a magenta colour that caused a pit to grow in his stomach. 

There’s a click from behind them, and his brain has little time to process it before the gunshot goes off. As soon as Matsukawa yells, Hanamaki’s eyes widen with the fear of watching his best friend having been shot right before him. 

Then comes the impact, shoving him down to the concrete  _ hard _ . It knocks the wind out of his lungs, and for a moment he can’t even think. Another gunshot rings out, bringing him back to reality. With all the effort he can, he sits up with his brain still swirling around his skull. Matsukawa clutches his side with both hands, the electricity running across his skin with more and more until his hair starts to stick up, moving in the same waves as the light. 

“Mattsun,  _ stop _ !” He tries getting up, and what had previously just been an impact turned into a searing hot sensation that makes him fall back down. 

A hand automatically flies to his hip, coming away shakily with the horror that he was bleeding. The more weight he put on his right, the worse it got. Panic rose in his chest, filling and filling his lungs until he thought he might not be able to breathe. 

Hanamaki had been shot. 

Hanamaki was going to die. 

_ I don’t want to die.  _

He kept his hand over the bullet hole, crying out at the pain. There was no way he could get up again, getting up had made him experience the worst pain he had ever felt in his entire life. 

There was no way he could get up again. Hanamaki was going to die. 

Matsukawa, still bent over, now had the magenta electricity running up and down all of him. A tremour in the ground began, pavement cracking between them and the man with a gun. 

“Stop it!” He tried again, reaching forward and gripping onto Matsukawa’s ankle with his free hand. 

A strong numbing feeling runs up and down his arm, bouncing across each nerve. It does little to stop his friend, who now slowly began to stand upright. From across the crack, a shaky voice yells out at them. 

“You’re a _monster_!” His voice is scared, like he’s no longer sure of his plan. “You’re not a god, you’re a _monster_!”   
A bullet, flattened by impact, fell to the pavement with a quiet pinging of metal. The magenta gets brighter, his grip turning into a harsh sting rather than being numb. Matsukawa’s hands fall by his side limply. 

“You don’t,” he muttered under the buzz of electricity, “You don’t get to decide that. No one gets to decide.” 

The man backs up a step. “You- you’re not human. You’re a mo-”   
He doesn’t get to finish his sentence. The strike of magenta lighting comes out from Matsukawa with a deafening crack, so bright that the dark street becomes engulfed with only what could be compared to daylight on a summer’s day. Hanamaki shuts his eyes, the sting turning into a brutal burning. Reflexively, he lets go and the pain turns back into numbing. 

With another crack, the flash ends and he can hear people shouting from far away. Everything sounds far away, and even now in the dark, he feels as though he might have genuinely gone blind. 

_ Oh god, it’s because I’m dying.  _

Somebody’s leaning over him, he can feel it. Somebody’s calling his name and putting their hands on his hip. 

An eruption of splitting pain is enough to make him sit up with a gasp. 

His eyes begin to adjust to the dark, wide as he looks down at Matsukawa trying to somehow stop the bleeding. Over his head he sees it, across the crack in the pavement. 

The shriveled, burnt corpse. 

Another wave of pain comes and he’s forced to look down at Matsukawa’s hands, the magenta electricity turning blue as he swears and swears over and over again. Hanamaki chokes for air at the sensation that runs through his body, hot and cold at the same time. His lungs feel like they might explode as his head jerks back unwillingly, a strangled wheeze escaping his lips. 

A familiar red-and-blue flashing light with sirens fills the background of his thoughts. There might be tears running down his cheeks, but it’s getting hard to feel when another wave of electricity washes over his body.   
Hanamaki is going to die, all because he was jealous of Oikawa and Iwaizumi for having each other. 

All he wanted was his best friend, and now he was going to die.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mmmm i forget to update with school and all but this is also more of a self-indulgent story and i dont think anyone's reading this. but if you are ty anyway i appreciate it^^  
> make sure to wash your hands, stay home, and stay healthy. be safe, babes. i'll cya next time <3

**Author's Note:**

> i actually had this kind of pizza once and it was really good. we also had one with salmon, shrimp, and spinach and holy SHIT was it so good.  
> anyway tysm for reading if you cared enough. kind of a boring first chapter but im a sucker for seijou side characters so-o-o-o-o-o 
> 
> make sure to stay home/wash your hands/be healthy. stay safe homies, i'll cya next time^^


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